When it comes to internet use, Bulgaria might still be far behind the rest of the European Union in terms of connectivity, broadband availability and the use of online shopping, but it is in a class of its own in the fun and faltering categories that define hit or miss, famous or infamous.

Famous I
Any time I tell a stranger that I am from The Netherlands, more often than not their first reaction is "Marco van Basten" or "Johan Cruijff" (invariably both names get horribly disfigured in pronunciation). Now, when you say you live in Bulgaria, chances are you'll be met with "Ken Lee!"

Ken Lee was the unforgettable interpretation of Maria Carey's Without You by Bulgarian Valentina Hasan. Hasan, a young woman from a small Bulgarian village, who had left the country several years before with her husband and child to try their luck in Spain, was on a family visit when she saw announcements for the Bulgarian version of Music Idol and decided to take part. The rest, as they say, is history.

Now, the clip of her performance can be found on thousands of websites. The clip on youtube.com alone, with English subtitles, has been viewed 10 million times in the nine months it was up and Wikipedia has pages dedicated to Ken Lee in six different languages. For months, there was a rage around her performance, with countless covers from bedroom to stage performances.

There was something about Hasan that made her an instant hit. Who remembers, for example, 17-year-old Milen Dimitrov from the village of Dalboki and his version of Mariah Carey's song in "Amerikanski"? It was in the same programme series and was sort of the same thing, but Hasan was different, special.

She became an instant international star, who slightly changed the definition of Bulgarian pop music. And English.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RgL2MKfWTo

Famous II
There's little that is better for a documentary film maker, who has just made a film about a controversial subject, than to get your film forbidden and be sued over its production. This is exactly what happened to Alexo Petkov, the producer and director of the film Baklava.

Baklava is a film about two brothers, Djore and Kotze. Djore is 26, dresses in black, listens to drum & bass and does graffiti. Kotze is nine, wears a silver chain, steals, fights and loves pop-folk. In spite of their differences, the brothers hit the road in search of a buried treasure, willed to them by their grandmother. The film was shot in Bourgas with the help of several children from a local orphanage.

When the trailer of the film appeared online, local media reportedly received complaints from what was described as "concerned citizens" about the scenes of violence, sex and drug abuse in the trailer. According to Petkov, the film merely showed the reality of everyday life on the street for most of the children involved in shooting the film.

By mid-January the Bourgas prosecutor announced that pre-trial proceedings had been started against anyone involved in the film's production, on accusations of child labour and the production of pornography. This was the first and last time the Bourgas prosecutors' office said anything related to the film.

Despite its full co-operation at the time of the production, after the release of the trailers and the subsequent row, the management of the orphanage said the offending scenes had been shot "behind their backs". Petkov, unable to show his film in Bulgaria, meanwhile went on to show his film around Europe.
http://www.lostvulgaros.com/baklava/

Infamous I
Early February is the annual registration for kindergartens in Bulgaria. In an attempt to modernise and speed up the process, Sofia city hall had decided to use online registration through a specially created website.

On enrolment-day, February 4 2008, however, the site blocked and the server went down because it could not handle the interest from parents trying to register their children.

Not only were thousands of parents accessing the website at the same time, what made matters worse was the "first come, first serve" basis at which available places would be assigned, so a non-responsive website could potentially lead to a child not being assigned a place at the kindergarten of choice. There are few things that get parents more worked up than a non-responsive website when their child's education and future are at stake.

When Sofia's deputy mayor for education, Yordanka Fandukova, handed in her resignation, it was not accepted by mayor Boiko Borissov.

For 2009, new regulations have been announced whereby classifications would no longer depend on date and time of registration.
http://kg.sofia.bg/

Infamous II
In September, the State Agency for National Security (SANS) announced it had successfully concluded its investigation into opasnite.net, a website that published exclusively anonymous gossip and which had allegedly published state secrets in its stories about the private lives of prominent politicians and businessmen.

After a five day investigation, which included a seven-hour interrogation of a journalist, SANS had managed to uncover the owners of the domain.

Presumably still high on the euphoria of a successfully concluded investigation, a SANS official was quoted by local media as saying that SANS was ready to take on the task of removing anonymity online. Opasnite.net has since relaunched as opasnite.eu.

When several months later Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN (brain) decided to crack down on Bulgarian torrent sites with the help of local authorities, it did not make use of the experience of SANS in uncovering the owners of these websites.
http://opasnite.eu

Infamous III
How long could anyone withstand a billboard-size invitation, setup across your office window and addressed to you personally, with the picture of Miss Bouzloudja 2008?
Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev showed he was not made of stone when he responded to the invitation and did what she invited him to do: sign up for the social networking website of Bulgaria's young socialists, red-bg.net.

It was a carefully orchestrated PR campaign, organised by the young socialists who, as they said, wanted to show the Prime Minister had a large, young following.

Stanishev's attempt to show he was connected with a younger, hipper audience was followed less than a week later with a black and white television clip, which the party released to promote its upcoming congress, squarely aimed at its traditional, senior following and which sent the clear message that the party still stood for the ideals it "once" had.
http://redfen.net